Paulo Freire's Quotes

Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.

The trust of the people in the leaders reflects the confidence of the leaders in the people.

It is absolutely essential that the oppressed participate in the revolutionary process with an increasingly critical awareness of their role as subjects of the transformation.

How can the oppressed, as divided, unauthentic beings, participate in developing the pedagogy of their liberation?

Liberating education consists in acts of cognition, not transferrals of information.

Revolution is born as a social entity within the oppressor society.

At a certain point in their existential experience, the oppressed feel an irresistible attraction toward the oppressor and his way of life. Sharing this way of life becomes an overpowering aspiration.

Education must begin with the solution of the student-teacher contradiction, by reconciling the poles of the contradiction so that both are simultaneously teachers and students.

It is not systematic education which somehow molds society, but, on the contrary, society which, according to its particular structure, shapes education in relation to the ends and interests of those who control the power in that society.

Manipulation, sloganizing, depositing, regimentation, and prescription cannot be components of revolutionary praxis, precisely because they are the components of the praxis of domination.

Those truly committed to liberation must reject the banking concept in its entirety, adopting instead a concept of women and men as conscious beings and consciousness as consciousness intent upon the world.